So this has been a weekend loaded with activities I attended haphazrdly. The Kowloon City Bookfair, which is running its 6th annual leg, finally fit into my junky, over-the-head, boisterous music-by-the-habourfront weekend. Organised by young literary connoisseurs, back by a creativity-oriented high school, a think tank, etc., the bookfair is a mélange of talks, roundtables, flea market, mini-bookfair and a mini-concert. Free of charge to everybody, coarse but ever-evolving, it’s what this overcrowded and over-developped city needs if Hong Kong were to slow down and smell some roses, or fresh air!

Thanks to a random gift of kindness, I set foot in West Kowloon waterfront for Clockenflap, probably the last time in a while by the West Kowloon waterfront since constructions will be swung into actions in the coming years.

My previous impression of this “music festival” has been some gweilos replicating rock concerts spiced with burning man. Upon entering I was upset with the overfloated plastic recycle bin with all types of trash. A day later however, a politically charged performance by “my little airport” sort of eased my displeasure. Well, in a non-perfect world, room for improvement is the key!

Hong Kong police used tear gas and pepper spray on a crowd of pro-democracy protesters who ignored warnings and blocked the city’s main highway. The violence came after several days of student protests.

The dust has long settled after the World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Football aside, the theme song and its video really sounded and looked heavily American, albeit international production. So much for Brazil’s backbone of photographing and fingerprinting Americans visitors knocking on their doors on arrival, when it comes to big money, multinationals still dictate how events are run or sponsored. This couldn’t be truer weird and somewhat vulgar and definitely violent (towards the end) parody which par hasard caught my attention today:

So the Brazilians spent all that money, threw in some false pride, garnished with cultural absence and misrepresentations and topped off with some posh infrastructures, et Voilà! Who eventually would benefit? Wait, Rio will host the Olympics in less than 48 months and the story keeps on fermenting itself.

8 April!!!!!! After seeing the british teledrama Margaret and reading and viewing reports and commentaries on Margaret Thatcher’s passing A YEAR AGO, it’s my turn to write this résumé.

Geofrery Howe, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, John Major, Neil Kinnock, Paddy Ashdown are some of the names that popped up immediately when I learnt of her death. Having grown up in colonial Hong Kong and spending my very first year living away from my home town for post-secondary education in Liverpool, I watched on TV many of the parliamentary debates she had as prime minister as well as her then very dramatic ouster.

Paddy Ashdown, leader of Liberal Democrats 1988-1999, was very polite in his tribute. Nevertheless he highlighted her liberalisation of markets, her stripping down the barriers to business and her lowering taxation
had resulted in not greater prosperity for all but tonear ruin and disgusting climate of greed of the few.

He added the freedom advanced in the Thatcher years were “strangely partial” since it was mainly “economic freedom” of a few. On the other hand, Thatcher didn’t care much about political freedom of gays, people of Scotland or women

It was an unmitigated disaster for Britain because, if you recall, it commenced with a series of Budget changes and use of interest rates which, combined with the fact that oil was monumentally coming on stream, pushed the price of the pound out of sight and succeeded in inflicting devastating harm on the productive base of Britain.

And the end result was not modernisation, it was ­devastation.

Finally, more salt on the wound: Totally absent in any Western media coverage, her encounter of a bigger beast called Deng Xiao Ping in Beijing, China in 1984 concerning the future of Hong Kong definitely occupied her mind and caused the infamous “kowtow”. But given her stand on Falkland Islands and Pinochet just marked the slow decline of an empire which could only look back to the past.

Rest in peace, Lady Thatcher. Apart from being the first female head of state of a G8 country, you also did the world a lot of damage. Unfortunately, even though I don’t wish for another Reagan or Thatcher or Mulroney, their incarnations will certainly pop out again and wreak havoc. Case in point? Manuel Valls, the new Bacelona-born French Prime Minister who once said the name “Parti Socialiste” and its policies are dated. Hold your breath people!

That was the post title I had in mind a year ago on 31 July 2012 when Gore Vidal took the elevator to heaven. The London Olympics were in full force and I remembered seeing Freddie Mercury (no, I wasn’t hallucinating), the Queen Elizabeth II and George Michael somewhere, somehow during the opening ceremonies. Mix that with Vidal and you know how the mathematics worked out.

I’ve watched more video interviews, documentaries on VIdal than I’ve read his books. Nevertheless, his wit and elegance perfused in the media forms by and about him. Here are some of his quotes.

Our state of affairs:

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

On being a Queen perhaps:

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

On democracy:

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal—God is the Omnipotent Father—hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is not just in place for one tribe, but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose.

I really preferred this ONN particular Queen I wrote about among the four.

If you are USA citizens (many nationalities are Americans, you don’t need me to lecture you in this particular post, do you?), you shouldn’t be so proud that gay marriage seems to be making grounds, nor that you have re-elected your first Black president for a second term. Nothing worth going jubilatory about.

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary of George W. Bush, had tweeted as around the time when Snowden’s leak surfaced:

Well a few short notes for those of you, that might mean MOST of you who haven’t noticed.

Chinese dissidents flock to foreign media such as BBC, Radio Free Asia, RFI, VoA and the like when they have something to say.

And this time the news broke with The Guardian, a British newspaper, a foreign media for the people of ths USA. The journalist, who is American, seems to be based in Brazil these days. I bet North American soil is too safe and free for him these days.

And the rhetoric of US officials on Snowden while is not identical, but definitely rhymes with that diffused by the Chinese government when Liu Xiao Bo was honoured with the 2010 Nobel peace prize.

Perhaps Evo Morales was “meddling on the internal affairs” of the USA that the Western European countries citing technical or diplomatic difficulties and did not allow the president of Bolivia to pass through their airspace. Boy I thought “meddling on the internal affairs” is patented by the Chinese government. Apparently not, or Beijing failed to follow up with the ptent office.

hmmmm did I say Chinalization? LOL

I dunno whether Dick Cheney was correct on Snowden as a “Chinese” spy, but I am curious as to how much backbone the Nobel committee will have should Snowden receives a nomination for the Peace Prize in the coming years. Afterall, Obama had his during his first year in office.

So be faithful to your country, dear US of A citizens, for the government is doing everything to promote you and your liberty!

hmmmm Did I say Sinification?
Wait a minute, I might be wrong afterall. Google, whose offices in Beijing got a sea of flowers when Chinese netizens sent in their condolences. Google took the moral high ground to leave China because the Chinese government likes to breathe down the necks of her citizens. Now, by the same token, Google, MSN, Facebook and the like must find refuge somewhere OUTSIDE of the USA if NSA/Prism are acting like overprotective parents. But where could these companies go tomorrow?

Original music that gave rise to the Pantene commercial( in Asia only, it seems). How could the triste lyrics of separation or rejection be transformed into such a princessly like commercial (as seen on top) for the gullible young women in Asia? Weird! 啟發那洗頭水廣告的happy ending。老實說，通俗的廣告歌把哀傷的歌詞變成華麗的派場,莫非用過這產品都有”快樂結局”乎？

A friend of mine questioned me the significance of a janitor from Columbia University, Gac Filipaj, who graduated with a Bachelor degree in Classics after taking 14 credits per year in the morning while holding his full time job in the afternoon into the wee hours in the morning.

custodian Gac Filipaj at work

It’s inspirational because he presevered and took advantaged of free tuition offered to employeees and studied over a span of twelve years. A decade to finish this academic project, how could one not paying any respect!

Gac Filipaj congratulated by boss

I also read from from news sources that he was making US$28 an hour. Two things came to my mind immediately for comparaison. Firstly, in Hong Kong employeers and business owners bitched about how the minimum wage, implemented since May 2011, hurt their businesses. While I don’t know the exact minimum wage in New York, probably 9 or 10 US$, HK’s stands at less than US$4 (HK$28). Secondly, I recall student newspaper of City University of Hong Kong documented the Uni’s practice of moving a three-shift (8 hour each) day to a two-shift (12 hour each) arrangements for security guards. That compounded with the fact that another university outsourced the sanitation work to save money, make me think and rethink progress or the lack of in various industrialized economies. Sure there are people living in poverty, but Hong Kong businesses have some learning to catch up in treating the lower-paid employees.

CLASSE said what many adults and politicans dare NOT – taxing the financial institutions, in order to help geler the fees. One of my friends once said that few, if any politicans have the guts to take on the banks. Given the latter are the true culprit crises after crises, taxing them might not be a bad idea, only if the provincial and Federal governments are still vertebrates though!